Picking Up The Pieces
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: The last time Stacy left, Wilson was the one stuck picking up the pieces. Slashy.
1. Chapter 1

_"Picking Up The Pieces" by Krissy Mae Anderson  
_

**Summary:** "The last time you left, I was the one stuck picking up the pieces."  
- Wilson, to Stacy, _Need to Know_  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** House/Wilson  
**Spoilers:** "Three Stories", "Need to Know"  
**Disclaimer:** The guys are not mine, and I am just borrowing them for a bit of angstiness.

* * *

**1**

  
James Wilson enters the doors of Princeton-Plainsboro with a tan and with a skip in his step. The conference and the vacation that followed have done him good – he feels almost like a new man. This is the first time since the divorce that he has felt cheerful. He runs through his mental calendar, reminds himself to attend the pediatric oncology lecture and talk to Cuddy about the Chief of Oncology position, since Jack Harrison is about to retire and Wilson knows that he's the perfect candidate for the spot. He's the boy wonder, first in his class in med school, a decent ass-kisser, and looks good on a brochure cover. Everyone loves him, except Greg House.

Greg makes fun of his ties, pokes holes in his articles and calls him Jimmy Howser. Wilson has missed him while drinking his way through the contents of the hotel bar in Kauai and leering at hula girls – his friend has always been good at crashing his pity parties. They had planned to go the conference together, but Greg called him a couple of days before their flight and said that he was not feeling well – something about an old soccer injury acting up. House is a healthy guy, but he's getting older, just as Wilson himself, and broken bones and stretched ligaments that were nothing only a couple years ago are letting their owners know that middle age is just around the corner. Wilson presses the up button on the elevator and rubs his left elbow unconsciously as he waits – he's never had a soccer injury, but years of tennis have left their mark. His wayward thoughts turn from Greg's soccer injury to Greg after a soccer game, ten years ago _– Greg in his grass-stained shorts and without a shirt on, a cocky smile on his face – _

"Oh, hi!" The nurse who erupts from the elevator is blonde and perky, and her name's Lola- Lilith- Leslie, her name starts with an L, damn it, he can't remember her name but he knows that she wears pink lacy panties and can't carry a tune in the shower. He forces himself to smile at her and mutters something about the sun and the beaches as she asks him stupid questions. He misses the elevator, and is forced to wait for it again as Nurse L runs off wherever she was going. So he waits again, deliberately not thinking about Greg and remembering the pretty Hawaiian tour guide who made his vacation much more satisfying than the tour brochure had made it out to be. He had never met anyone quite like Aolani, and he doesn't think he ever will again, but the memory of her is good, there's nothing bad there _– no fights, no harsh words, no break-ups –_ enough to give him at least a week of good mood. The elevator door finally opens and Wilson thanks whatever higher being there is that the elevator is empty. He doesn't want to face any co-workers just yet – he needs just another couple of minutes of vacation, just another couple minutes of peace.

He escapes any people he knows on the way to his office, and discovers that his inbox is crammed with letters and memos and late papers. Wilson sighs and separates the intradepartmental office supply inventory from someone's misplaced notes on renal cell carcinoma with little dancing kidneys drawn in the margins. After he's done he checks his messages_ – Dr. Wilson, please call Dr. Morton about the breast cancer seminar; Wilson, your clinic hours have changed; Jamie, I miss you; James, we'll be back from Florida on the 18th; Jimmy, I don't think it's the soccer injury._ House's voice sounds strained and a little bit scared, and Wilson dials House's home number and waits. The phone rings and rings until voicemail picks up. "Hi, you have reached Greg and Stacy, please leave a message-" Stacy's voice says impassively, and Wilson bites his lip and hangs up before voicemail-Stacy can finish the sentence. Oh well, he can call Greg at work later in the day to see what's wrong – the department secretary over at Union seems to be the only human being in the state of New Jersey who can track down the elusive Dr. House.

**tbc..**


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

Three hours later, Wilson has been sucked back into the rhythm of Princeton-Plainsboro - he has already scheduled a biopsy for tomorrow morning and is almost done grading papers. He has tried calling Cuddy, but she is MIA, and no one knows when she will be back, or where she is off to, so Wilson suffers through several more Anatomy tests before giving up and going down to the cafeteria. Before he can find a nice quiet corner to sulk in, the surgeons ambush him and he's trapped among them, clutching at his coffee cup as if it's a life ring. _Boring, boring, boring_, he chants silently, but pretends to be listening for the sake of politeness as Mark Kline, Head of Surgery and Bore Extraordinaire, goes on and on about notable cases from last week. Wilson thinks that he'd give his right arm to be having lunch with House instead – his friend also likes to talk about various disgusting medical procedures while eating, but he certainly never is so mind-numbingly dull when describing them.

"So did I miss anything?" Mark asks the other surgeons, pausing to take a bite of his turkey sandwich.

"You forgot to mention that guy with the infarction," Mary Nielsen says excitedly, biting into her donut. "That was a shame – if only they'd caught it just a couple of days sooner he probably wouldn't need such an invasive procedure. But definitely an interesting case…"

"Infarction?" Wilson asks, wondering why an infarction merits such excitement. Mary blathers on about clots and muscle death, and Wilson grows bored again and starts drifting off, praying that someone from Oncology will decide to have lunch so he'll have an excuse to escape the surgeons.

"… The ER guys screwed up the diagnosis," Mark says, starting on his key lime pie. "They thought he was a druggie – and he surely didn't help by grabbing the syringe from the nurse and sticking himself with it while swearing like a sailor."

Wilson dumps more sugar into his coffee and stifles a yawn. _Blood clots are just so not my thing – give me a good tumor story anytime_, he thinks, as Mary takes over the story and tells of the patient's return. Wilson perks up a little bit when she says that the patient managed to diagnose himself correctly, and is listening attentively when Mark adds that the patient is a physician himself. Something troubles him about this story, but he is not sure what it is, so he just continues to listen. Finally, when Mark talks about removing the muscle, the soccer injury creeps back into his mind, and Wilson is suddenly fervently hoping that the mysterious patient with an M.D. is not House.

"What leg?" he interrupts Mark, who's droning on about how this would make a good M & M case.

Mark frowns and pokes the remains of his pie with a fork.

"Right leg. Why do you-"

"What's the patient's name?" Wilson snaps, his hands shaking, the coffee spilling onto the tabletop. Oh no, it cannot be…

"Greg something-or-other. But-" The coffee cup tips over and Wilson rushes to the elevator, his heart hammering in his chest. When he gets to the elevator he realizes that he doesn't know what room the patient – House – is in, and on the next floor he dashes out to a nurses' station and almost breaks the keyboard as he types the familiar name in, hoping that it's just hasty thinking on his part, but the computer screen ignores his silent plea and dutifully informs him that "House, Gregory J" is in room 43H.

** tbc...**  



	3. Chapter 3

**3**

Wilson almost breaks the handle off the door in his haste to get into House's hospital room. But once inside, he freezes, because the man in the bed doesn't look anything like his friend. He's gray and sick and suddenly many years older than he used to be, and Wilson feels at a loss. What does one say in such a case? "How are you feeling?" is an empty sentiment, because Wilson can't even start to understand how House feels right now. Wilson has been blessed with good health, and he has rarely been a patient, but he knows that it is a doctor's worst nightmare to be seriously ill, especially if the illness leaves a mark, _because who wants a physician who couldn't heal himself?_

But all this philosophical bullshit still leaves Wilson with nothing to say. If House were just another patient, the words would come naturally, and Wilson would hold his hand and smile at the right time and exude hope for the future and try his best to raise the patient's spirits. _Your mobility will be compromised severely, I won't lie to you,_ he would say to the hypothetical patient, _but let's hope for the best, and even though it will be hard, you'll make it, you'll be able to walk if you try hard._ But he knows what brand of cologne House likes to wear on Fridays, and that his friend smokes cheap Marlboros for days after he loses a patient, so the comforting words are stuck in his throat and his hand remains empty.

Greg looks up at him, eyes dull and dark, and Wilson forces himself to look back. The usual spark is not there, dulled with painkillers and a primal sadness that betrays that something earth-shattering has taken place while he was gone – other than the infarction, of course. Wilson suddenly misses that spark, and the thought of it never returning makes him shiver.

"How was Hawaii?" House asks listlessly, and Wilson just stares at him, because Hawaii is the last thing he is thinking of right now. How can he say "It was amazing" to someone who was getting a chunk of his leg cut out while Wilson was starring in his very own X-rated version of _From Here to Eternity_? The memory of Aolani feels bitter now, and Wilson manages to choke out a half-hearted "okay".

"Good," House says, and looks away. Wilson perches on the edge of a chair, and looks around the room, anywhere but at House, counts the tubes and monitors that surround House like a spider's web a doomed fly. Heart monitor with its drunken hiccups of PVCs, various tubes snaking under the blanket, the PCA pump standing forlornly by the bedside and the pulsox on Greg's right index finger blinking like a failing Christmas light. Greg has long, elegant fingers – _a piano player's hands_, he recalls Greg saying one night over warm beer at the "Broken Lancet", and immediately proving this by pushing a tipsy surgery intern off the chair by the piano and playing Chopin's _Larghetto in A flat major_ to Wilson and a crowd of inebriated med students.

Wilson has never asked House about his musical talent, because that night something in Greg's eyes told him that it would be a wrong step to take in their budding friendship, and thus Wilson still doesn't know how his friend learned to play the piano. He realizes that he doesn't know his friend very well – all that he really knows about House is what House has allowed him to know, but it is still more than anyone knows about House, except maybe Stacy. He wonders about her absence, but he is not about to ask, so he gathers his courage and finally mumbles a "How are you?" that rings as empty and hollow as Wilson has expected it to be. 


End file.
